Papers › Fluid dynamics alters liquid-liquid phase separation in confined aqueous two-phase systems
Fluid dynamics alters liquid-liquid phase separation in confined aqueous two-phase systems
Eric W. Hester, Sean P. Carney, Vishwesh Shah, Alyssa Arnheim, Bena Patel, Dino Di Carlo, Andrea L. Bertozzi
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
Liquid-liquid phase separation is key to understanding aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) arising throughout cell biology, medical science, and the pharmaceutical industry. Controlling the detailed morphology of phase-separating compound droplets leads to new technologies for efficient single-cell analysis, targeted drug delivery, and effective cell scaffolds for wound healing. We present a computational model of liquid-liquid phase separation relevant to recent laboratory experiments with gelatin-polyethylene glycol mixtures. We include buoyancy and surface-tension-driven finite viscosity fluid dynamics with thermally induced phase separation. We show that the fluid dynamics greatly alters the evolution and equilibria of the phase separation problem. Notably, buoyancy plays a critical role in driving the ATPS to energy-minimizing crescent-shaped morphologies and shear flows can generate a tenfold speedup in particle formation. Neglecting fluid dynamics produces incorrect minimum-energy droplet shapes. The model allows for optimization of current manufacturing procedures for structured microparticles and improves understanding of ATPS evolution in confined and flowing settings important in biology and biotechnology.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections